Motivating fair-weather fans to bet, even when their home team's underperforming

BCLC - PLAYNOW.COM SPORTS BETTING CAMPAIGNS

BCLC partnered with Noise Digital to develop a content and acquisition strategy that would keep bettors engaged whether the Canucks or Seahawks were hot or not.

Partners

Facebook

Services

Strategy, Media, Creative, Technology

The Brief

When the Seattle Seahawks and the Vancouver Canucks are hot, sports fans want to be part of the action; betting on key games with BCLC’s PlayNow.com. When they’re not, the opposite is true. With both teams predicted to underperform, would it be possible to excite sports fans across British Columbia enough to keep betting on sports?

Our Approach

We dug into the data and performance metrics from previous seasons and combined them with first party research. We learned that fans were more likely to stop betting than switch to betting on higher-performing teams. Fans simply couldn’t let go of long-standing rivalries. Switching team allegiances wasn’t an option.

The research pointed to a strategy that could engage fans and sports bettors with dynamic content and provocative messaging designed to keep them interested in their hometown team. Instead of relying on wins to drum up betting interest, we’d talk about trading deadlines, injuries, hot streaks and even rumours to rekindle excitement.

To take advantage of every twist and turn in the season, we would need a flexible, data-driven media campaign that could change messages at moments notice.

The Solution

No matter the score, the teams playing, or the latest injury report our data-fueled creative hit just the right note.

Brian Krenzer, Creative Director @ Noise Digital

We created a messaging matrix with hundreds of creative variations ready to roll out in media through all the twists and turns of the season. We created a predictive model and dynamic display campaign based on team performance and news that could change creative messages in market at a moment’s notice.

When news from the Seahawks and Canucks picked up, our dynamic display units pushed out emotionally-charged copy lines designed to reignite fandom and encourage confidence in betting on the team again.

When play was especially discouraging, messaging and creative dynamically shifted to focus to exciting out-of-market games. Headlines, colours and team names would adapt to suit the user’s preferences, creating custom messaging at an individual level.

As the football and hockey seasons unfolded, we monitored how our fans responded to each piece of content and how that engagement translated into conversions. We then updated and optimized the campaign to ensure we were targeting the right messages, to the right fans, when they were most likely to place a bet.

Results

40% drop in cost per acquisition

As predicted, the Canucks and Seahawks started their 2016 seasons strong but quickly fell off the pace. Not only did we manage to create positive revenue returns for BCLC, but we exponentially grew performance year on year, despite the Canucks putting up one of their worst seasons in recent memory.